Breaking down the nonsense about Wikipedia
Jared Fagerberg
Issue date: 11/2/09 Section: Opinion
But let's take a step back for a minute people. Could it really all be evil, just some Punji pit of inaccuracy meant to lure the lazy? The point that Gorman is missing is that Wikipedia means well. The idea behind our lovable wiki is to present people with a readily usable secondary source of information - one that is living and updatable - and they have more than succeeded in this task.
A 2005 test published in Nature (once again, I'm getting this all from Wikipedia) showed that scientific articles on Wikipedia were close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopedia Britannica. In fact, it is not uncommon for professors to allow students the use of Wikipedia for attaining general facts. Overall, there has been an endowed sense of trust in the online encyclopedia, leading it to become one of the most often visited Web sites on the Internet.
For those of you who don't know, editing Wikipedia is not a simple cut-and-paste operation. Lazy Web surfers and those unfamiliar with HTML will be immediately deterred from posting their off-color musings once they reach the edit page. Also, Wikipedia operates under the scrutiny of a billion searching eyes - even the most obscure articles receive attention from the public and discrepancies that slip through the Wikipedia editing net are often fixed by the detail-oriented.
This brings me to my experiment. Upon realizing that I couldn't fully support myself on secondary research, I decided to make a few choice edits to the Loyola University Maryland page. After adjusting our endowment to "1.43 million hot dogs" and making a few other choice edits (some of which I cited), I summarized my contributions to Wikipedia by saying I "updated some general facts and figures." Then, I moved on to the WLOY page and edited some more common sense logistics and submitted my work. Before I could even begin my page on Jerard Fagerberg (Pirate), I had two messages from Wikipedia informing me they were onto my game and unamused.
I'm not saying to get unscrupulous here - be critical of your sources. What I was trying to prove is that Wikipedia is critical too. They have standards. This makes them a strong secondary source of information - one that is forever more accessible than the library stacks. So don't be afraid to use it. Just don't go all Morgan Spurlock on the Big Macs, buddy.
A 2005 test published in Nature (once again, I'm getting this all from Wikipedia) showed that scientific articles on Wikipedia were close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopedia Britannica. In fact, it is not uncommon for professors to allow students the use of Wikipedia for attaining general facts. Overall, there has been an endowed sense of trust in the online encyclopedia, leading it to become one of the most often visited Web sites on the Internet.
For those of you who don't know, editing Wikipedia is not a simple cut-and-paste operation. Lazy Web surfers and those unfamiliar with HTML will be immediately deterred from posting their off-color musings once they reach the edit page. Also, Wikipedia operates under the scrutiny of a billion searching eyes - even the most obscure articles receive attention from the public and discrepancies that slip through the Wikipedia editing net are often fixed by the detail-oriented.
This brings me to my experiment. Upon realizing that I couldn't fully support myself on secondary research, I decided to make a few choice edits to the Loyola University Maryland page. After adjusting our endowment to "1.43 million hot dogs" and making a few other choice edits (some of which I cited), I summarized my contributions to Wikipedia by saying I "updated some general facts and figures." Then, I moved on to the WLOY page and edited some more common sense logistics and submitted my work. Before I could even begin my page on Jerard Fagerberg (Pirate), I had two messages from Wikipedia informing me they were onto my game and unamused.
I'm not saying to get unscrupulous here - be critical of your sources. What I was trying to prove is that Wikipedia is critical too. They have standards. This makes them a strong secondary source of information - one that is forever more accessible than the library stacks. So don't be afraid to use it. Just don't go all Morgan Spurlock on the Big Macs, buddy.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 2
Gregory Kohs
posted 11/02/09 @ 12:07 PM EST
It sounds like Wikipedia is perfect for a student with the intellectual discernment of a Jared Fagerberg. Just pray your research doesn't involve the "consumer economy":
http://wikipediareview. (Continued…)
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